Welcome new CoLi user
This First Steps guide will give you a short introduction to the Coli computer systems.
You should have received a copy of this document along with your user account ID. If you do not have a user account yet, please apply for one using this form:
http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/sg/coli-account.pdf
If you are a Coli staff member you will be able to use the computer provided for you in your office. If you are a student, you may use one of the computers in the Coli Computer Lab (Complab) which is located in the basement of building C7.2. Your student ID card will give you access to both the building and the Complab. You are allowed to use the Complab facilities at any time in order to access teaching material, related literature and information from the Internet which is related to your studies.
System setup for students in Complab
Log in to the Linux PCs using the account ID and password you received. If the PC is turned off, turn it on. If Windows is started, reboot the PC, Linux will start automatically. This document assumes that you are using the default Ubuntu session.
Start the Firefox web browser. To do so, look for the symbol in the left tray, or if it cannot be found there click the top icon in the bar labelled DashHome and type "firefox" then click the browser icon.
To configure your web browser correctly you will need to configure the Complab proxy settings. There is detailed documentation for proxy configuration at the rear wall of the Complab titled "Internet: Firefox Proxy Setup". You will need to follow those instructions, otherwise you will have no Internet access.
System documentation - CoLi Wiki
Now that you have successfully started and set up the Firefox web browser, you can access the full documentation about the Coli system in the Coli "wiki" pages:
http://wiki.coli.uni-saarland.de/public
Among the first things you may want to check out are the wiki sections on email setup and on printing.
Policies
As a user of the Coli computer systems it is mandatory that you check your email at regular intervals. Your Coli email address is your official contact email address which you are obliged to check at regular intervals.
Disk quota
You may use the Coli computer systems to store your personal and study related data. As a general guideline students who are majoring in computational linguistics or language science and technology should not use more than 500 MB of disk space, students with computational linguistics as a minor should not use more than 200 MB of disk space, unless there are special circumstances. For more information on quota, please see the "Disk usage" section in the user Wiki.
You may find out about your filesystem usage by starting a Konsole/Terminal session (find in left bar or via the DashHome button by typing "Konsole"). Then type "xdiskusage $HOME" followed by the <Return> key. Important: type $HOME exactly as here, all upper case with "$" in front.
In your $HOME directory there is a link "shadow" which points to the "shadow file system". This file system is for temporary and unimportant data. It is not backed up and data there can be lost in case of a file server crash. You may store up to 2GB of data there.
Windows - Winhome
As a Windows user you should store all of your data in the "My Documents" folder. Please do not create folders on your desktop or store data on your desktop as this will increase your Windows profile and you will suffer from severe performance degradation.
Expert users: "My Documents" points to the "H:\" network drive connected to "\\smb\winhome".
Getting help
Please direct all questions, suggestions and complaints to
help AT coli DOT uni-saarland DOT de